Project Car Buying Advice

One of the things we wanna do next is give you some buying advice so that if you're out poking around and you're looking for a vehicle to restore, even if it's not as old as this '56, that you're gonna have some idea of what to look for. So, Brent, let's talk about your body. I mean, this body first, and I know you've got some ideas to help people get on the right road. Yeah. And back up just a little bit, depending on how much money you have to spend and how much work you wanna do, that's going to determine where you're going to start. The more money you spend, obviously the less work you need to do. It all just depends on what you want to end up with as far as a finished product. But some of the things to look for, bodywork wise, if you're not comfortable with doing any kind of bodywork, you want to look for straight and, and finished body, as minimal rust as you can possibly get, obviously, because rust is what's going to kill these cars. So one of the tricks is we'll actually sight down the fenders and look, see how straight it is. Cause if they're a little bit wavy, that's an indication that there's been some body work done to it. Whether or not it's good or bad, you don't know until you actually start stripping paint. Now. And is that to say, it's not necessary to say that wavy is bad? No, not necessarily. Because it's going to, again, it's where there are a lot of variables here, depending on what your standards are for what you want as a finished product and how far you're willing to go to repair those waves. If you want a dead laser straight line front to back. Yep, exactly. And it's just, and it's time and plastic filler. And I mean it just time, money, one of the two. Or both. Or both, yeah. Sometimes it is both. So anyway, look down the sides, see if it's wavy. See if you can see any spots that are going to need to be repaired, factor that into the amount of time or amount of money that you're going to have to spend to fix it. And another thing, take a magnet and just stick it to the car. If there's good steel there, the magnet is going to stick. If you get into a spot where there's a lot of plastic filler, the magnet won't even stick to it. And that can be buried under painting and look okay. It might look great. Now again, plastic fillers, maybe not bad, but you're just looking for your awareness of what's been done to it before. Yep. Absolutely. It all depends on, again, what you want to end up with. So if it's really bad and you think you want to show car, then you're going to need to plan on cutting that panel or whatever, cutting that panel out and replacing it or replacing the fender, how far you want to go with it. So bodywork wise, I mean, you can hide a lot of things under primer. You can hide a lot of things under paint. Mechanically wise, If it's got an engine and transmission, do you care? Are you gonna, are you planning on using it? If you are, then look for oil leaks. Obviously in 1956, if it's an original engine, you're going to have some oil leaks. So take that into consideration. Check the suspension out, see if you can wiggle it back and forth. And if you're, you know what I mean? If you wiggle it up and down. If the shocks are decent, look at the shocks. Look at the frame, see how rusted it is. There's just a, there's a lot of things. What you're really doing is you're starting to make a checklist for yourself of, all right, how much work on the body? How much work on the engine? How much work on the tranny? How much work on the suspension? Because the checklist is leading into a price tag. Right.And depending on how much money you've got to spend, if you've got X amount, and it's going to cost you this much to do all those repairs, and you're going to exceed that amount. So you have to back up the price of the original car accordingly to try and stay within your budget. Now, what about this idea of, I know for this one, it's going to be pretty easy to get parts for it. We've mentioned the wiring harness already, and that was an internet order, but it seems prudent to, as you're looking at the car and you start to make a list of what it's going to need, to do some preemptive shopping and see what you can get, where you can get it, and what it's going to cost. Because not every vehicle out there, some of the more exotic stuff, little harder, which means a little more dough, right? To get those parts. And that's basically what it is again, is there's parts for almost everything. And if they can't be found, you know, just laying around somewhere, somebody could probably make them for you, but it's going to cost. Tri-Five Chevy is the 55, 56, 57 Chevy. There's a lot of aftermarket parts. We could rebuild this car from front to back out of a catalog. So this is a really good candidate for, for buying parts. Some of the other ones, yeah, they're, they're hard to find. You can find them, but they do get hard and they get pricey. Now the interior stuff, we know the headliner and the carpet's shot in this one. So same thing there, give it a visual, and add those items to your list as you need to. Yup, absolutely. How far is it? I mean, how far do you want to take it? If the interior is okay and you want to drive it that way, drive it that way. All right. Well, let's, you know, it's a little bit nebulous, but the answer is a little bit nebulous because, Brent keeps saying, it's going to depend on how much dough you want to spend, how much time you want to spend. And so it's hard for us to focus you in completely. But treat this restore vehicle the way you would treat any used vehicle that you are going to try to buy. Take it for a ride if you can. If you can't, figure that into the price. Figure on worst case scenario. Because if you can't run the engine and the transmission, you have no idea what you got. Well, and there's always, if you're not comfortable looking at a car, I mean, assessing the mechanical status of the car, there's always, you could take it to a mechanic. You could take it to a body man, somebody that knows cars to, to just give you an idea. And it's worth a little bit of money you gotta give them to get an expert opinion on what you've gotten. Yeah, if you don't know what you're looking at, it is for sure. That's great advice right there.